October 25, 2020

The soundboard recording is just awful. Ugh. Anyhow, Spy is standard to start the show, though the track has a several minutes long intro for Air Song at the end of it. Great work, tracking team! The Air Song intro jam is neat, if forgettable. The jam out of Air Song into HAB develops this slow, plodding feel that frankly leaves me bored for a good amount of it. As they get into a more tom-heavy section around the 16-minute mark, I think this gets marginally better, though at this point they’re basically in HAB already. The first couple minutes of HAB are spent finding their footing, but around 11:30 they sort of lock in and everybody gets on the page fairly quick. The Abraxas jam begins with a very digital sidechain-happy jam. Barber winds up using some of his new toys during this jam, with varying degrees of success. The groove they lock into around the 9-minute mark is really neat. This gets progressively less interesting as they get nearer to the HAB ending. They extend the final “second ending” jam a little bit. I wouldn’t count this as a jam itself, but this is neat.

TVM 1 is about as standard as it can get. TVM 2 is a weird jam. Like this never gets far removed from The Very Funk, but eventually just kinda drops into Basis. Weird. The Basis jam features Barber again using his new toys, but the arp here is out of sync by a bit. This sticks out like a sore thumb to me, which sucks since the rest of the stuff that’s going on is ridiculously cool. Once he comes back in without the arp, I think this is worth relistening, as there is some really neat stuff going on (between the 11’-13’ marks). The Anthem jam is absolutely fantastic. Magner uses a xylophone patch and the band gives the feel of an ominous Magellan jam. This turns out really neat. This carries through all the way to the Shimmy peak, which is solid. The first few minutes of the Shimmy jam are a trance assault that sounds like it’s building to something really great. They develop a pretty simplistic four-chord progression that feels a little like Magner is overpowering, which is not something I write often. They wind up in the Basis peak, but it’s tracked as part of the Shimmy track. Okay. Story encore is short and relatively painless.

Highlights: HAB, Abraxas*, Anthem*